Bringing Faith to Life
relationship
A love like no other
1
Sometimes there is a friend, early on, say, in high school, who writes in your yearbook. Pages and pages, continued here and then over there, with a message that defies time and space.
Dispensing with the cursory, superficial gibberish, this friend heads straight for the truth with words so profound that, at 17 years old, you actually transcribe them so you can call on them again and again. Each time you do, they speak something new.
They planted a seed in me then, and now they reverberate through the ages. It’s as if Jesus Himself spoke to me through this friend.
Today, I have a special prayer for you: I hope that you find fulfillment, and that you are at peace with yourself and God. Because that is what I think is most important, what gives meaning and direction. His love is so great, Dear One, that the very thought of someone who loves me that much, in spite of the cursory lip service and lack of time I give Him makes me cry almost in shame and in joy.
There are so many pressures. After all, you will only be happy if you get straight A’s, hit .400, play at every game, go to every party, attend every Prom, lose 10 pounds, get accepted to five colleges, win a scholarship that covers tuition, room and board, and more or less win honor and glory in every endeavor.
But you don’t have to. Even if you hit .155 or sit in McDonald’s on Homecoming night, or fail every class, God loves you and is proud of you anyway. And that alone is enough to give you courage to stay up an extra hour studying, or keep running for office, or whatever. Someone who loves you so totally deserves never to be let down.
All of my love.
Imagine a love like this…
Out of the Dust There is Life
07 years
by wlebolt
in Christian, culture, current events, faith, hope, In Action, Life, relationship, Sermon Response
When my girls were small, I had magical healing powers. I could kiss a scrape or bandage a cut and presto! It would be “all better.” They would smile and go back to playing. Today, these girls are young women, and I no longer have that power. They spend their days working hard in places far from home, and when they hurt they’re on their own. They’re old enough to know that kisses do not work long distance, only in person.
I’m grateful that my girls know that Christ can be such a person, thanks to Sunday school teachers, worship leaders, mentors and pastors. Thank goodness, because the world my kids navigate is very different from the one I grew up in. It’s different, even, than the one they knew as children. Today, it seems, there is more shouting and posturing, more blatant hatred and prejudice, and more evident disrespect for persons and planet on a global scale. Nearly everywhere there is rubble, covered in dust.
This is the world my children have inherited from me, and the world I receive today in news, navigation and neighborhood. So many dusty images flood my mind, of collapse and heartbreak, earthquake and explosion, fire and flood, with medics and rescue personnel searching desperately for survivors.
In Mexico City recently, the collapse of buildings brought rescue efforts to the scene of a school. Oh children, especially children — the weakest, youngest and most promising among us — bid us to pause… hoping, waiting, listening, praying.
How in the midst of all of our commotion can we hear a tiny cry, barely a breath? But when together we pause and a hush falls, we do hear it. Then suddenly there is furious digging, hand to hand and shoulder to shoulder, cobbling through earth and stone and rubble to reach the tiny one before it’s too late.
Shovelfuls of earth yield to hands which brush away dirt and debris as the small, still form is lifted to safety. Silence doesn’t dare hope. But suddenly, there are shouts: “The child is alive!” Oh, such cheering and joy must reach through tear-stained cheeks to the very ears of God. Out of the dust there is life.
Hope is there when brother acknowledges brother, father welcomes son, and foe becomes friend. When we all gather with one cause, one intention, and one mission, our hopes are realized. We do this for our children, for all children.
“Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins
and will raise up the age-old foundations;
You will be called Repairer of Broken Walls,
Restorer of Streets with Dwellings.” (Isaiah 58:12)
The business of rebuilding the ancient foundations falls to us. We will be called repairer of broken walls, restorer of streets with dwellings. Dwellings where our children can raise their children, with loving care tendered to kiss scraped knees, and all children can play together.
Lord, thank you for the resilience and tenacity of children. Help us to love them well by providing sturdy support and a firm foundation on which they can build.
Putting the Basket in the Water: Trusting God in the Next Phase of Your Child’s Life
0This is so powerful. Thank you, Ashleiwoods! For anyone trusting their child to the next place on their journey, here’s to floating that basket. And all those who will be looking out for it downstream.
Putting the Basket in the Water: Trusting God in the Next Phase of Your Child’s Life
How Long Does it Take to Grow Up?
17 years
by wlebolt
in Body, Christian, Cool Science, God, hope, Life, love, relationship, Sermon Response, Spirit
Mommy, when you are a hundred, will you be as tall as the clouds?
This, my little daughter asks me from her seat on the swing in our backyard. Her sweet up-turned face looks past me to the billowing clouds overhead. To her, growing up means growing taller so she can reach the monkey bars unassisted and ride all the rides at the theme park. Surely 100 years should be enough to reach those clouds, she concludes.
While our growing taller comes to an end during our teens and early twenties, our growth doesn’t stop then; it merely goes undercover. Throughout our lives, our bodies are busy reshaping, remodeling and renewing themselves, not only to heal after injury or illness but as a regular practice. Cellular turnover is part of our programming.
This notion always came as a surprise to the students in my anatomy class who, though quite a bit more advanced than my small daughter, generally assumed that once they stopped growing up they started growing old. Actually, there’s a whole lot of reconstruction going on.
Even our bones, which seem the deadest of things thanks to archaeological excavations and Halloween decorations, are active and changing our whole lives long. Even when they aren’t growing longer, they’re growing stronger in response to the pushes, pulls and pressures they endure. It’s the beauty of weight-bearing exercise. We’re designed to fortify ourselves. What breaks down gets rebuilt, only stronger, given sufficient time, good design and quality building materials. We are always undergoing renovation.
We call this maturation, and I’m pretty sure it’s meant to be a total make-over of body, mind and soul.
Kids think that once they’ve grown up they’re grown-ups, figuring they may have some “filling out” to do but otherwise they’re ready to take on the world. We, who have spent some time in the maturing phase, know that the growing never stops. Though we’re not getting any taller, we’re always remodeling and reorganizing: filling in gaps, replacing old notions, and fortifying things in light of new information.
We who have reached our full height are meant to be filling in: building spiritual muscle, agility and fortitude as God reshapes it along with our minds, hearts and souls. We are clay in the hands of the potter, teaches Jeremiah 18. A contemporary retelling might call us plastic, hardened at room temperature, but pliable at God-temperature.
God’s not done with us yet. That’s such very good news. God’s continually defining and refining, affirming and growing us, inside out, as we will let Him. That’s not just for our own good, but for the good of all of our relationships, including the precious ones we have with the generations to come.
They’re sure to ask us in Sunday school or confirmation class, around the dinner table or after ball practice, on their graduation day or on their wedding day, “Mom and Dad, do your think you’ll ever be able to touch the sky?” They ask, not because they really think we will, but because they want to. And they can’t see ever doing it without us.
Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. ~ 2 Corinthians 4:16-18
Oh my yes, little girl, there’s every chance I will reach those clouds because, thanks to God, we’re both still growing.
Is God Good All the Time?
47 years
“God is good …All the time!
And all the time …God is Good!”
Ah, the call and response of a faithful people. We like knowing how to respond. But do we believe it? Is God really good all the time? for the parent who’s just lost a child? for the man who’s just received a dire diagnosis? for the teen who is bullied, the wife who is abused? what of the family without a home? the children who live in fear? The list goes on and on.
Is God really all that good? Certainly a good God would have none of this.
Recently, I attended a funeral service for my friend Bill. He had been a good husband, good father, good son, good uncle, good friend, good businessman, and, by all accounts, a good Christian. His family suffered with him through nine months of brain cancer before they lost him. Is God still good?
What is good? According to me, it’s an outcome; it’s a judgment; it’s the feeling I have when everything goes my way. On those days I chime right in: God is good all the time and all the time God is good. But Bill and his family and friends remind me that that’s not the good that God is.
God is love; that’s way more than good. God made this substitution, so we can know that:
- God is patient.
- God is kind.
- God does not envy, does not boast, is not proud.
- God is not rude or self-seeking.
- God is not easily angered and keeps no record of wrongs.
- God does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
This God I can actually see in those circumstances of sorrow and hurt and pain and loss. There may be no good in any of those, but there is God. God is so much better than good.
More than this, love is not just what God is but what God does.
- God always protects.
- God always trusts.
- God always hopes.
- God always perseveres.
Since Love does that, so can we, if we believe in love. God is there, no matter the circumstance, providing what we need to respond in love to the one who is in need. When we offer protection and trust, and when we hold onto hope that perseveres, we are in love. Love never fails.
God is so much better than good. God does good, in and through us, when we let God.
At Bill’s memorial service, a man came to the pulpit to share memories of their longtime friendship. “People come into our lives for one of four reasons,” the man began. “To add, subtract, multiply or divide. Bill was an add-er.”
Oh my yes. Bill added so much; and somehow, there in the saddest of circumstances, it seemed that what Bill added, God was multiplying. Love is like that.
The Trust Game
07 years
Have you ever played the trust game? Where someone demonstrates trust in his or her fellows by falling backward into the waiting arms of a team of people set to catch her or him?
Blind fall.
Big risk.
No guarantee.
Complete confidence.
TRUST.
Whom do you trust like that?
I just played a new trust game. One partner keeps eyes closed, while the other partner leads him or her (only with words, no touching) through a crowded room, out a narrow doorway, down a crowded hall – with other people, both sighted and not-sighted, playing this game – around a bend, down another hall and into a crowded public space. On arrival, turn around and return.
Guiding, without sight. Only by faith. Faith in me. That no harm would come to her.
I am cautious, waiting for the way to clear, while talking her through the steps we will take to reach our destination. Introducing myself – did I mention that we had never met each other before? – I assure her that her safety is my utmost goal. But we will achieve our objective.
We begin. I go before her, my back to the traffic, my face to her. At first, I give instructions: turn this way, 2 steps that way, stop. But when I watch her face I see her comfort. She has placed her confidence in me, her complete trust in me. I will talk her through this.
Come toward my voice.
I will stay in front of you.
No harm will come to you.
I will clear your way.
We enter the lighted hallway through the open door of the classroom and her face beams. She pauses without moving. “That’s amazing,” she says, “I know I am in the light, even though my eyes are closed.”
I smile, but she doesn’t see it. She is waiting and listening, blind to the traffic, the congestion of people, and to the chaos of others navigating the hallway. She trusts. Fully.
So simple. Listen to My voice.
“I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me— just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd. ~ John 10:14-16
Breath of Creation
2A million lights twinkle above me in constellations I once knew. Bright lights from bodies trillions of miles away scatter the early morning darkness. I whirl in wonder at their glorious display.
How, O Lord, can I fail to believe you are here?
My feet, rooted in dust and dirt, are heavy in the sand of time, in the gnarled root of twisted words and weighty worries. It bends me and pulls me down, insisting I pay attention. I fall again and again at my own feet.
How, O Lord, can I believe you are here?
Is there another? Another who reaches and falls, reaches and falls, as I do this day? My expiration, she inspires? His expiration, I inspire? Do we, together, breathe the universe?
How, O Lord, could we not believe, if we knew one another?
When Hide and Seek Becomes Here I am
18 years
Ready or not, here I come!”
I always loved hearing those words because that’s when the fun really began. I knew all the best hiding places around our house. In the stairwell, behind the bushes, between the pine trees, by the swing set… What made them good was this: you could see the seeker, but they couldn’t see you. You had to hold your breath as they came near so you didn’t give yourself away, and then as soon as they went past, you sprinted for home base. “Safe!” you hollered when you got there.
Recently I heard a different take on this game. The author of a devotional piece shared that as a little boy, he always won at hide and seek. His hiding places were so good that no one ever found him. Some years later he realized that the reason he was never found was because no one looked for him. “It’s easy to hide when no one is seeking you,” he wrote.
How devastated that young man must have been. It was obvious that even now as a grown man, the memory of those days still deflated him. But he took comfort in the story told of a Biblical version of hide and seek:
(Adam and Eve) “heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?” ~ Genesis 3:8-9
I wonder what hiding felt like to Adam and Eve. Did they hold their breath hoping God would pass? Did they hope God would find the other first, so they could save themselves and sprint to safety? Did they consider giving themselves up in hopes God would go easy on them? Maybe just play it dumb and pretend nothing happened? All good until your fig leaf completely gives you away.
I guess we humans have always been pretty fond of hiding. We find some clever ways to disguise our indiscretions and downplay our inadequacies, hoping God will move along without taking a discriminating look. The irony is, God has no reason at all to come looking for us (Psalm 139) and yet He does anyway. Not because he doesn’t know where to find us but because we all have something to hide. He knows that once it’s out in the open, the game can change.
I remember playing hide and seek with my young children who, back then, weren’t so good at hiding. I knew all their usual hiding places, and even if I couldn’t see them, I would hear them. They would nearly always give themselves away with the muffled snickers. I would pretend not to see them, of course, because that’s the fun of the game.
“Now where can she be?” I wondered, just loudly enough for my daughter, who is mostly wedged under the bed except for the two sneakers sticking out, to hear. The sneakers wiggle as she chortles.
“Hmmm. Is she here?” I say, looking under her desk. “Nope. Maybe here?” I try, opening the closet doors wide and with much fanfare. “Nooo,” I say with a melodramatic sigh of resignation and defeat. “Where could she possibly be hiding?”
Of course by now she can’t contain herself. “Here I am, Mommy!” she shouts, as she bursts out from hiding. Then she runs and throws both arms around me to give me a big hug. “Mommy, you were so close, but you didn’t see me!” Of course I would never tell her that I knew where she was hiding the whole time. That would ruin the game. Her favorite part is the ‘Here I Am, Mommy!’
I am grateful to know that God is a seeking God, and that He comes looking for me, even when he knows exactly where I am hiding and exactly what I have to hide. If I listen carefully I can probably hear Him bashing around a bit in the underbrush to give me fair warning. If God loves me the way I love my children, then his favorite part is probably the “Here I am” hug, too.
Then, of course, I am standing there in my fig leaf.
Thanks to Christ, God is okay with that, too.
Search me, God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting. ~ Psalm 139: 23-24
One Table, Many Chairs
1
Something special happens when we insist on one table with everyone around it. Oh, we may not like everyone there. We may not have seen them in years. We may not even recognize them. But, when the first rule of gathering is that everyone gets a seat at the table, the dynamic changes.
It seems that rule #1 has gone missing. We feel just fine with one head table and a banquet hall filled with rounders of 10. Or, let’s just scrap the head table sit with our friends around a 6-seater or a 4-top. Why not a deuce? Hey, we’re completely happy with our laptop and our tall latte at the table for one as long as there’s an outlet. As long as I can plug into “my community” and access all the wisdom the world has to offer, I’m good.
This is the direction we’re headed and we’re good with it. Our private truth feels fine. And that’s fine until we are confronted with different: different looks, different ways, different beliefs. Nothing wrong with different, we say, take that seat over there. Way over there.
Separate but equal, that seems fair. Just like it did when segregation seemed fair. And, in practice, people thought it made sense, until it didn’t.
What’s wrong with each one having a seat and a table to himself is that it doesn’t cause us to squirm. It doesn’t require us to listen to the difference, consider the different, and frame our response in respect to the one who differs. We dearly need rule #1: there is one table.
As soon as separation is an option, it’s an out. A reason to pack up our differences and find people who agree with us. In our own clusters we can justify our actions and find support for our opinions. We may work up a sweat and convince ourselves this is the work we are meant to do, this holding the line against those who would invade from that other table across the room.
But it’s hard to hear across the distance. And in the rabble of a million voices, each speaking his truth, where can we find a common language?
There’s only one way I know: One Table, everyone around it, no exceptions.
Yep, it will be nearly impossible to find union there, and the struggle to find a unified voice will nearly kill us. But it’s the presence of the opposition, not its absence, that forces us to find it — faith, word, answer, method — a way forward that includes EVERYONE around the table.
One Table with as many chairs as there are people who seek a seat. One microphone and one scribe. When we love, we listen.
It would nearly kill us all. But out of that near death experience what life!
Love Strong
010 years
If we love with heart, soul and mind, is that enough? What about strength?
The Pharisees tested Jesus asking, “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matt 22: 36-40)
Heart, soul and mind may be turned to Him, but it takes strength to love your neighbor as yourself. Mental, physical and emotional fortitude are the work of a lifetime and the attention in every day. People are hard to understand, hard to reach and sometimes, very hard to empathize with. But the Lord, insists.
May you be strong enough to face the day, and may the day itself leave you stronger for tomorrow, for the love of yourself, in the service of your neighbor, by the grace of a merciful, all powerful and unimaginably strong God.